


Promises

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Commitment, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 22:02:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade finds out from Molly about Sherlock using again. Friendship--Greg and Molly, but also Greg and Sherlock. Some presumed backstory. Some discussion of drugs and drug use, of a wide range of varieties. Not exactly gritty, but not fluffy, either. </p><p>Greg's a good friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises

It wasn’t until days late that Lestrade heard Sherlock was using again… and even then he only learned it through Molly. He’d dropped by to check on the results of a “suspicious death” autopsy. He no sooner got there than Molly started chattering about anything and nothing at a speed that rivaled Sherlock’s when he started deducing, then abruptly excused herself, rushing to the women’s lav and slamming the door behind her.

Lestrade didn’t need to be a DI to work out the obvious: Molly was _upset_. Arse over teakettle upset. Flippin’ mental. Which pretty reliably meant Sherlock, somehow, some way. He sighed, and considered breaking all the rules and following her in. He could hear her crying and it came close to physically hurting staying out while she coughed and choked on her own misery. Instead he simply cracked the door, said, “I’m here when you’re done, okay, Mol? Shoulder to cry on, love, all right?”

Molly didn’t answer, which he figured was as close to a “thanks, yeah” as he was likely to get, and miles away from “bugger off, Greg,” which he’d more than half expected. He leaned outside the restroom by the door, arms crossed over his chest, ignoring the scandalized looks of the one nurse who went in—though he was more than a bit relieved when she came back out and said, “She’s doin’ better, dearie. Nice of you to stay for her—she’s a mess, poor thing.”

When Molly did come out, still sniffling a little, he popped up from his lazy lean on the wall to fall in beside her. “Coffee?”

She shrugged. “Coffee’s good.”

“Buy you a sandwich, too, if you like. Take you right out of here?”

She nodded, wiping her nose with a spare tissue. Her eyes were red from crying, the lids puffy. “Right out of here sounds great. Thanks, Greg. You’re the best.”

He dragged her out to Indian, in the end. They both went for chicken tikka masala and naan. A slow sentence at a time she told him. John Watson hauling Sherlock in, along with some young chav from a crack house. Some kind of testy thing between Sherlock and John—which sounded unsettling already. Then Molly running the pee test. Then she had to have another little cry, before telling Lestrade she’d blown a circuit or two and bitch-slapped Sherlock three times and then ripped him a new arsehole for being a damned fool.

Lestrade, who’d walked this road before, closed his eyes and said, sadly, “Shiiiiiit.” Then he stole a couple paper serviettes from the next table and handed them to Molly, as she was out and if she didn’t get one soon she was going to start some unsightly dripping.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“Not a problem, love.”

She sighed, wiped her eyes, honked dolefully, and sighed again. She gave the kind of half-grin that’s not a grin at all, but a grimace trying hard to pass as something happier and funnier. It was about as unsuccessful as one might expect. “How can he do it? How can he do that to himself? How can he do that to people who love him?”

Lestrade shrugged. “Same way I can quit cigarettes five times running, and still slide back to them when things go pear-shaped? When it happens, you’re not thinking ‘cancer’ or about how much you hate waking up hacking your lungs out. You’re thinking how much less it’s going to hurt when you light up and take that first long drag.”

She thought about it. “It really is the same thing, isn’t it? Like I pour myself a scotch after a bad day. Well. Except I’m not addicted.”

“Doesn’t make it really any better, you know,” Lestrade said, considering. “Just means that you’ll dump poison in you entirely of your own free will, no chemical dependency pushing it along. Yeah?”

She scowled.

He nodded. “Yeah. I work on that one, too. Like my pint, I do, end of the day. Like a good cigarette, even a cigar every so often. Just between you and me, back in th’ day, before I started training for the Met, I wasn’t above a bit of reefer madness myself. Go to a concert, hang with my friends. Even tried a line or two myself, yeah? Thing is, it’s all a game. Dump stuff in, feel great, don’t worry what it’s doing to you or anyone else until it’s a bit late in the day.”

She really didn’t like hearing it. “It’s different. Go out to a pub. Drink a few drinks with friends. It’s not the same.”

“Never came home pissed?”

“Sometimes. But it’s…different.”

He shrugged. “You’re the pathologist.”

“Oh, right, rub it in,” she snapped, frowning. She pulled in, sitting mouse-like in the chair, tearing restlessly at yet another paper serviette. Reluctantly she said, “I see so many rotted out lungs go through. Ruined kidneys. Livers. More than I see ODs, really.”

He nodded. “And that’s where you’ve got to start. It’s not that it’s good. It’s not. But you can’t start by treating it like it’s different from any other habit—if you do, he’ll come at you and prove ten times over what an idiot you are. Only way I know to deal with it is to deal with what it does to him, and to us. And that’s all. Which,” he added approvingly, “you at least focused on. Even if you did go for the total knockout in the process.”

She looked at him, then, and said, as though it was really just dawning on her, “You’ve been with him before when he was using.”

He nodded, drawing lazy loops in the remains of the chicken tikka masala gravy with the tip of his spoon. “Twice.”

“How did you manage?”

“Helps to have been a cop awhile. If nothing else, they cram information on drugs and users down your throat, right? Professional obligation. And I’ve dealt with more than enough. You learn to…ride it.”

“So, you just stay out?”

He shook his head. “Know my limits, though. Set my own rules. Not his rules, mine. No using on a site. I’ll turn a blind eye if he makes it easy, but if he doesn’t—well. Drugs busts can happen, yeah? Pushes me too hard—steals evidence, screws up site management, messes with witnesses, well, drugs busts can happen a lot. And I know where to look better than most. So that’s a start: he knows what I won’t let him do to me and mine. Respects it, most the time. Beyond that: I’ve walked through one OD with him. I’ve done one detox with him and Mycroft and a couple detox specialists Mycroft dug up. Held his head over a toilet a time or two. It gives me room to tell him he’s a young ass, sometimes. And it gives me the right to keep a few promises he asked me to make.”

She frowned. “Promises?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Yeah. Promises. You know, the ones you ask people to make that you hope they won’t keep—but you’re grateful in a pissed sort of way when they do? ‘Don’t let me have a second slice of cake’? ‘Promise you’ll haul me out of the funeral if I start in on Aunt Flossie’? ‘Swear you’ll stop me before I start dating another idiot’? You know. That kind of promise.”

She nodded, considering. “Yeah, ok. What kind of promises did he ask you to make?”

Lestrade smiled. “That’s between him and me, Mol. Just like I promise to drag you out to Indian again any time you feel like the bottom of the Thames…and not to tell anyone why. Okay?”

She met his eyes, and nodded, reluctantly. “Okay. You’re good people, Greg Lestrade.”

“Not if you ask my ex,” he said, snorting.

“Your ex was an idiot,” she replied, and grabbed the check before he could. “My treat, because you’re the best.”

It wasn’t until he got back home that he was able to address the question of Sherlock’s fall from grace in privacy. He poured himself a single shot, and stopped to remind himself of the blessing of being only mildly hooked on something that was legal. He settled by his computer. From there he sent two messages—one to Sherlock’s phone, and one to his emails. Both said, simply, “Because I promised, mate. Now keep your own promise, and look at every single one…”

Attached to both was a link to a file containing every photo and video he’d taken over the past seven years of Sherlock blasted. Some of them dated back to their first association. Some weren’t even his fault—which wasn’t the point and wasn’t the promise. There was the time Irene Adler had nailed him. There was one desperate night when he’d literally been lying in the gutter, singing. There was even one of Sherlock lying on the bed of the cell with John Watson sitting nearby on the floor, both drunk off their heads on the night of John’s stag do. Every damned one made Sherlock look like a complete and utter fool.

He sighed, after he hit send. He hated having to do it. He wasn’t even sure it mattered.

Until the next morning, when he got the email from Sherlock.

_Dear Gavin._

_I hate you._

_I really, really hate you._

_But thanks for keeping your promise. I’ll think about it._

_I promise._

_SH_


End file.
